With the expansion of the internet, more and more user devices and electronic appliances are connected to the internet. It is expected that the user devices and the electronic appliances can exchange information with little manual user intervention. The internet web will not only be used to present information to the user, but also used for machines to communicate with each other.
A number of standardization efforts have been done to achieve the vision of a semantic web e.g. the standard Semantic Web Activity (W3C). This semantic web is a web of data, utilizing common formats for integration and combination of data drawn from diverse sources. It also standardizes the common language for recording how the data relates to the real world objects. One of the basic requirements is to provide a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) to each individual resource on the internet web. Consequently, every resource on the web needs a unique identity so that it can be identified and referred to in the communication process. The network connected user devices and electronic appliances belong to the main group of resources to be used. The W3 C and The Internet Task Force (IETF) defined standards, and these standards defined the usage and format of the URI.
In U.S. Pat. No. 6,654,796-B1, a method involves assigning an IP address for a cluster, and establishing a hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) connection from a management station to a network device. A network device management request with the URI indicating the network device and management data is received. A forwarding HTTP connection is established from the network device to an expansion network device indicated by the URI.